Diego Liatis, a Montreal gamer and entrepreneur, told Ars that he still plans on releasing a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive map of Berri-UQAM, the city’s most well-known metro station. He's moving forward—the map is due sometime in March 2013—even if it means a drawn-out lawsuit brought by the local transit authority.

“If you ask me to change the name of the station—forget about it,” Diego Liatis told Ars, starting the sentence in French and switching to English for emphasis. “I understand [copyright law]. But there are limits, such as the name of the station.”

Liatis said he planned on meeting in person with STM representatives later this week. While he is willing to alter the STM logo and a well-known piece of art that hangs above a track, he’s not willing to compromise on the name of the station or its layout.

“Either [the STM] opposes me and we’ll meet in court,” Liatis added. “Or [the agency] will be OK with it.”

The February 11 cease-and-desist letter reminds Liatis that the STM “had warned you that it did not authorize you to use its image nor reproduction of the station in question for this project,” adding that use of its name, acronyms, graphic symbols, and seal are “prohibited by law unless permission is granted by the STM.”

Simon Marin, a LAN ETS spokesperson, told Ars in an e-mail that the university, and by extension its LAN party event (LAN ETS), is "disassociating itself" from Liatis and his map. Marin did not provide any further explanation.

Liatis added that STM's media representative, Amélie Régis, expressed concern to him that releasing the map would allow it to be used by actual terrorists training for an actual attack. Régis also said it would be "insulting" to Montreal's Arab community.

UPDATE Tuesday 5:42pm CT: Régis finally wrote back to Ars, saying that she had never spoken to Liatis, and was "really surprised to read the opposite." Ars has contacted Liatis again to clarify who exactly he spoke with at the STM.

“We were doing the Charleston,” Stern said. That’s when two police officers approached and pulled a “Footloose.”
“They said, ‘What are you doing?’ and we said, ‘We’re dancing,’ ” she recalled. “And they said, ‘You can’t do that on the platform.’ ”

And so, as their training manuals surely instructed them to do, the officers demanded to see their IDs. Because they were dancing. Where someone was playing the drums. In the most cosmopolitan and culturally-rich city in America. In any case, when Hess could only produce a credit card (which had his name and photo on it), this happened:

"The officers ordered the couple to go with them — even though the credit card had the dentist’s picture and signature. When Hess began trying to film the encounter, things got ugly, Stern said.“We brought out the camera, and that’s when they called backup,” she said. “That’s when eight ninja cops came from out of nowhere.”

The ninja cops then alledgedly tackled Hess to the floor, cuffed both of them, and detained the pair for twenty-three hours. The initial charge was apparently impeding the flow of traffic of what is reported to have been three other people on the platform. The police then added other charges, such as resisting arrest.

All charges were subsequently dropped when the paperwork was finally reviewed by the NYPD's Not Crazy Department. The couple are now suing in Manhattan courts, but maybe it's time a national memo went out to law enforcement agencies reminding them that dancing people with cameras don't necessarily need to be tackled?